O que é que nos motiva?

Um artigo interessante, "Do you play to win or to not lose?":

"Motivational focus affects how we approach life’s challenges and demands. Promotion-focused people see their goals as creating a path to gain or advancement and concentrate on the rewards that will accrue when they achieve them. Promotion-focused people are comfortable taking chances, like to work quickly, dream big and think creatively.
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 for the promotion-focused, the worst thing is a chance not taken, a reward unearned, a failure to advance.
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Prevention-focused people, in contrast, see their goals as responsibilities, and they concentrate on staying safe. They worry about what might go wrong if they don’t work hard enough or aren’t careful enough. They are vigilant and play to not lose, to hang on to what they have, to maintain the status quo.
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Sometimes even minor tweaks in how you think about a goal or the language you use to describe it can make a difference.
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Your aspiration is to score at least three times.” Or “You are going to shoot five penalties. Your obligation is to not miss more than twice.” You probably wouldn’t expect a small change in wording to affect these practiced, highly motivated players.
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But it had a big impact. Players did significantly better when the instructions were framed to match their dominant motivational focus, which the researchers had previously measured. This was especially true for prevention-minded players, who scored nearly twice as often when they received the don’t-miss instructions.
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Promotion-focused people tend to increase their efforts when a supervisor offers them praise for excellent work, whereas prevention-focused people are more responsive to criticism and the looming possibility of failure."